


How Bronze Was My Valley

by missdibley



Category: Aardman, British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, early man - Fandom
Genre: Bronze Age, Eventual Smut, F/M, Redemption, Stone Age, Why do I do this to myself, early man, redemption arc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 06:43:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13781955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdibley/pseuds/missdibley
Summary: Nobody, it would seem, is past redemption. Not even a once feared, now reviled, felonious lord of the Bronze Age.





	How Bronze Was My Valley

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after the events of _Early Man_. Mild spoilers.

Elio was the best bronzesmith in the city. He had long suspected as much, winning commissions and making wares for customers for as long as he had worked in the profession.

But on the night he was called to the stadium, when he was made an offer he could never have imagined receiving, let alone being able to accept, he flew home to share the news of his good fortune. But when he did, Elio was instead greeted with confusion and outrage instead of the ecstatic joy he had expected.

“Betrothed?!” Elia stood by the soup kettle she had been tending, armed with a carrot and an iron ladle that she was poised to fling at his sweaty, bald head. Being so close to the hearth of their modest hut on the outskirts of Bronze City, sweat coursed down from the top of her head, pouring into her eyes where it melded with angry tears.

“Did you not hear me, wife?” Elio set down his toolbag and took her by the shoulders. “I have just been appointed the royal bronzesmith for the city. His lordship…”

“That… that criminal!” Elia spat. “You sold our only daughter to the likes of him?!”

“I did no such thing!” Elio cried out in protest. “The good lord is rehabilitated now, and having returned here to resume his life, he merely asked if I knew of any eligible lass who might make an acceptable bride…”

“Was this before or  _ after _ you gave up our child?” Elia spat.

“Elia, please!” He insisted. “I think he is improved, chastened in fact.”

“Damn you, Elio!” His wife yelled. “You fool!”

Elio turned to their daughter, favoring her with a tentative, gap-toothed smile. “Darling?”

Maitearen, who sat on a stool near the rough hewn table where they took their meals, looked up from the basket she held in her lap. Her black hair was tied back from her face with a piece of rawhide from the tannery, revealing a dusky rose complexion she inherited from Elia. Her dark eyes were wide and curious, not angry and filled with tears like her mother’s. “Yes, Papa?”

Elio came to kneel at her feet. He smiled ruefully, wondering how he could have been blessed with such a lovely daughter. “What do you make of it?”

Maitearen bit her lip, her dark eyes sparkling as she considered the future. “Well, it’s just that…”

“What, child?” Elia scurried to join her husband and daughter at the table.

“I thought…” Maitearen faltered. “I thought we agreed that I should be courted until a young man from a good family with a handsome dowry…”

“But this isn’t some young man who would house you in a hut not much larger than this!” Elio took the basket from his daughter’s hand and set it on the floor. He held her hands in his, rubbing the knuckles with his thumbs. “He is no merchant or tradesman who would let your hands grow gnarled with housework.”

“But you are a tradesman, Papa, and a skilled one.” Maitearen smiled, brightening the dim room as she did. “And if you were good enough for Mama…”

“But we want better for you, child.” Elio shook his head. “I could never provide for Mama like she deserved.”

“Hush, love!” Elia interjected, urgently. “This is all I could have wished for.”

“Is it wrong for a father to want more for his offspring?” Elio insisted.

“No, Papa,” Maitearen admitted.

“Do you doubt my love for you, then?” Elio said, his eyes wet and pleading.

“Of course not!”

“Then know, child, that this is the best future I could have secured for you,” Elio whispered. “Because I love you so.”

Maitearen nodded.

“Does that mean you accept?” Elio asked.

Maitearen turned to her mother, who said nothing. The girl kissed her mother’s cheek, then got to her feet.

“Yes. I do,” she announced, smoothing down her rough woolen skirt. “I will accept Lord Nooth’s proposal of marriage.”

* * *

Elia could not bear to see Maitearen off that night, crying that it was too soon and so curel as she took to her bed. Lord Nooth’s advisor, Dino, had arrived after supper with a purse full of coins for Elio and Elia. He brought with him a young mammoth so that Maitearen could ride off to the stadium, where Nooth’s rooms were, in style.

Carrying little more than the clothes on her back and the shoes on her feet, Maitearen was assured that upon arrival she would be outfitted with fine gowns and accoutrements, the sort of thing expected from the bride-to-be of an important (if disgraced) man. Drawing a threadbare shawl over her dark hair, Maitearen bowed to her father and whispered that she looked forward to seeing him at the wedding.

Dino was quiet, not speaking as he escorted Maitearen. Apart from the torch he carried to light their way, the only illumination to be had came from the full moon that shone from up above. It revealed in the shadows a network of narrow footpaths and warrens where families such as Maitearen’s dwelled. Simple people who worked hard for their bread. Maitearen, having never met anyone more important that Dino, wondered what to make of her fate. She was marrying a lord, despite knowing little of what it meant to be a lady.

“Lady Nooth,” she whispered to herself. It made her smile to say it.

“Miss?” Dino looked over his shoulder. “Did you need to stop to rest?’

“No, sir,” she replied, kindly. “But thank you.”

The stadium looked strange in the night, empty save for a few guards at the main entrance who nodded at them as they passed. Dino helped Maitearen off the mammoth in a torch-lit hall, then showed her through some passages where things such as weapons and tools were kept.

“Apologies for the absence of a proper welcome,” Dino murmured in his musical voice. “But Lord Nooth has only just returned from the valley, where he was away on assignment for the Queen.”

“I had wondered,” replied Maitearen. “After the match against the cavemen, there were charges against him…”

Dino stopped outside a heavy wooden door, which he touched with the flat palm of his hand. “Yes, and all true, I’m afraid.”

“I see,” she replied, simply. Even so, Maitearen’s lip trembled.  _ What had her papa gotten her into? _

“The Queen, in her infinite wisdom and mercy, permitted the Lord to resume a portion of his duties here in the city.” Dino nodded. “While he is no longer governor of our fair city, he will remain in a limited advisory role to the new governor, whose arrival is imminent.” He looked abashed. “The Queen did not want him returning to the capital, where his presence and the story of his exploits might raise questions. She has permitted him to take a bride, a right that was taken from him when he was imprisoned.” He froze, just for a moment. “Pardon. That is to say, when he was reassigned.”

She gave Dino a sharp look. “And what are my duties to him, sir, now that he has returned?”

“None but to comfort him, cherish him as any wife would her husband,” Dino replied. “But only as long as you are able, and desire, to do so.”

“I see.” Maitearen clutched her shawl around her throat. “Am I not required to love him?”

“I don’t know that there is enough coin in the world to meet that immeasurable price.” When Maitearen blushed, he smiled. “Any more questions, my child?”

Maitearen cleared her throat. “When are we to marry?”

“Sunset tomorrow, but only if you accept his ring, and recite the marriage vow.”

“But I thought we were already betrothed,” stuttered Maitearen.

Dino shook his head. “Not yet. Your father accepted the match proposed by Lord Nooth. But as you have never met, the promise of your hand in marriage is not binding unless you make it so.”

“And if sunset comes and goes with no wedding?” Maitearen’s voice caught in her throat.

Dino sighed. “Then I shall escort you back to your father’s house.”

“And my father?” Maitearen’s brow furrowed.

“Shall continue to be the city’s official bronzesmith, my dear, and enjoy the patronage of Lord Nooth, and the incoming governor. Your refusal of Lord Nooth’s hand will not in any way invite recourse against yourself, your father, or your mother.” Dino permitted himself to take her hand in his. “Shall I announce you to His Lordship?”

Maitearen looked up at the heavy door, gazing upon the knocker that was shaped like a mammoth’s trunk. It was her father’s handiwork. She would have recognized it anywhere.

Maitearen pulled her shawl down so that it draped loosely around her shoulders. She tucked an errant lock of glossy black hair behind her ear. Taking a deep breath, she tilted her chin up and nodded.

* * *

The antechamber to Lord Nooth’s rooms was larger than the single room hut that Maitearen had been raised in. Filmy gossamer curtains swayed in stone arches through which she could make out the field and the seats of the arena. The air was cool, despite the torches that lit the short walk from the front door to the private salon where she expected Lord Nooth to receive her.

In the salon a great fireplace was lit, and before it was a small table laid for supper. Roast meat, fruits of the vine, cheese and soft bread. A flask of water, and two bronze cups for drinking. Maitearen tried not to let herself get distracted by the large, sumptuous bed on the far side of the room. Instead, she focused on the retreating figure of Dino as it crossed the room, and disappeared through a narrow door.

She had been waiting for so long that, made drowsy by the heat and tempted by the meal, Maitearen made herself comfortable at the table. She was licking juice from her fingertips when Dino reappeared.

He bowed. “Apologies, my lady…”

“I am not a lady, yet,” Maitearen admonished him with a smile.

“Of course, not.” Dino smiled. “But the lord is still taking his waters. He requires yet more healing from the labor of the mines, and finds that the minerals in the spring water are curative.”

“I see,” Maitearen replied. She got to her feet. “Then I would like to see him.”

“See him?” Dino was aghast. “In the bath?’

Maitearen nodded, feeling emboldened and bound to follow through on her claim. “If we are to be husband and wife, become entwined in life and in love, then why should I not be permitted to see him?”

“I daresay that is most improper,’ Dino protested.

Maitearen held up her hand to silence him. “But as this evening has been, well, unusual if not downright irregular, then what do we care of impropriety?”

“I only wish to do right by you and by Lord Nooth, Miss Maitearen.”

“And I want only to honor my father’s wish, to give me a future richer than anything he himself could provide.” Maitearen smiled. “This may not have been what I would have chosen for myself, but that is only because I never thought a thing such as this was possible.”

“So it is the splendor, the position, the prestige?” Dino asked.

Maitearen shook her head. “No, Sir Dino. It is adventure, which I doubtless would have missed if I had married the first punter who tried to woo me with a few donkeys and a promise to build me a hut right next to my parents’ own home.” She grinned. “And I’ve never met anyone who’s worked in a mine before.”

Dino could not argue with this. “Shall I show you to in?”

Maitearen took his arm and smiled. “Lead the way.”

The bathing chamber hot, full of perfumed air that intoxicated Maitearen as she followed Dino to the center. It enveloped her, made her simple dress cling indecently to her figure and giving her skin a sheen in the candle light.

She could make out the hulking shape of a large tub in the center of the room, into which hot water poured from a tap alongside it. If there was someone inside, she could not tell for the steam was denser there. Dino placed her hand on the tub’s edge, murmured “By your leave,” and then disappeared into the fog.

For a moment, all was still. And then Maitearen could hear splashing, someone or something moving through water, and the hot water stopped running. The steam dissolved, and as it did it seemed to sink to reveal a room with circular walls. Sculptures of fierce creatures in bronze flanked the door through which she entered, and doors that led outside. There were portraits on the walls. The Queen, regal and serene, sat in one. And in the other was Lord Nooth.

Bald, with a hawkish nose and hard, glittering eyes. Lips curled into an imperious sneer, dressed in a heavily embroidered tunic that emphasized the majesty of his barrel-like chest and belly.

She recognized him, of course. Maitearen remembered squinting at him whenever he rode through town on his armored mammoths, or waved at the crowds who attended matches in the stadium where he made his home. It had been a while since she or anyone else had seen him. And nobody missed him while he was away. Few were aware of Lord Nooth’s return, and so Maitearen wondered how people —- her friends back home, the neighbors — would react upon learning she was engaged to marry the scandalous lord.

The heat made her dizzy all of a sudden, and so Maitearen collapsed against the side of the tub. Even while she steaded herself, gripping the rim, a large hand grabbed. She gasped, for it was large and strong, with long fingers and palms roughened by hard labor. Blinking slowly, she looked up and into a pair of blue eyes that appeared kind, if a bit sad. They peered at her from a heavily bearded face, the hair sort of coppery with flecks of gold. Maitearen longed to touch it, touch him. The barrel chest was gone, replaced with a finely muscled torso that looked slick with oils.

She had seen men without their tunics before, fishermen returning after a long day at the river or young boys bathing at the communal trough after a good rainfall. So why did the fact of this man’s nudity, his concealed figure, make her feel fluttery inside?

First one hand and then two that clasped hers. Smiling shyly, the man nodded before leaning in to kiss her hand.

“Good evening,” he whispered, his voice musical and strange with its Continental accent. “You must be Maitearen.”

“Yuh, yes, sir,” she murmured, then held her breath. She watched him kiss her hand again.

“Please.” He looked grateful. “Call me Nooth.”


End file.
